Rahul Gandhi to step up grass root-level consultation in Congress

According to KILA sources,Gandhi said this while some of the participants said hardly any party held serious consultations with their grass root level workers and functionaries before deciding on candidates for Lok Sabha and assembly elections.

Some of them suggested that centrally-sponsored schemes

should take into account the specifics of different states

and Gandhi promised that he would certainly bring this matter

to the notice of the authorities concerned.

Lauding Kerala’s initiatives in decentralised planning and development being carried out through the three-tier panchayats and other civic bodies,Gandhi said “it is worthy

of emulation for other states.”

Gandhi,who arrived this morning,spent about 90-minutes at the institute,mostly listening to views of the participants and the presentation on “decentralisation and participatory planning.”

A top official of the institute said Gandhi was “quite impressed” by the activities of KILA,which offers training programmes on local self governance to elected representatives of civic bodies from different parts of the country.

Gandhi said would suggest his party functionaries in other states to send teams to attend programmes at KILA. Later,he also addressed a gram sabha at the nearby Adat village panchayat and focussed on the importance of decentralised

planning and development and patted the advances made by

Kerala in that direction. KILA Director P P Balan,senior members of the faculty and officials also spoke.